


By Blood Undone

by Carmarthen



Category: Blood Feud - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Backstory, Blood Brothers, Brothers, F/M, Feuds, Friendship, Gen, Minor Character(s), Murder, POV Minor Character, Vikings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-17
Updated: 2012-07-17
Packaged: 2017-11-10 03:37:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders Herulfson and Thormod Sitricson were once closer than brothers, but in the end birth is stronger than blood. A story about the girl Anders courted, his father's death, and the killing of old Sitric, which set him on the road to Miklagard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Blood Undone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tanaqui](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanaqui/gifts).



> I was very excited that you asked for _Blood Feud_ , and I hope this suits your interests, even though it is not quite about any of the main characters and there is a bit of het in there (I couldn't leave the mysterious girl Anders apparently did not marry out).
> 
> Many thanks to Thursday_Next, hedgebird, and gelishan for the betas, and Sineala for suggesting I add the scene with Signy.
> 
> I grant permission for others to make any type of fanwork based on this work for any reason.

“And so it is only a raiding summer for you,” said Thormod, crumbling a bit of dried bracken into the hunting-fire. It flamed blue for a moment, and the dancing fire lit Thormod’s face, his wide mouth and the russet hair which fell over his brow. For once Anders did not see laughter in it where he expected to find it.

“This year,” said Anders. He had no reason to feel guilty; if he went to Ireland with Thormod, Signy would surely marry old Grettir Half-hand, whom her father favored. Anders had as much right to wife and hearth as any. If he stayed, he was sure that in the end Signy would have him, and her father would come around to it.

Thormod laughed, gently, but there was something like a bee-sting in it. “And then you will be bound to a hearthfire. What of Miklagard, Anders?”

“It is only for a year, and there will be time enough for Miklagard when I have Signy, and a son to come after me.”

“Well,” said Thormod lightly, and leaned back against a birch-tree, absently fondling the lump of amber he always wore under his sark. “So long as you do not forget your promise.”

“I do not forget my promises!” Anders said, more hotly than he meant to, but Thormod’s words had bitten, when Anders still remembered the sharp hot feel of the knife and the press of Thormod’s wrist against his, and the way the scatter of blood had looked bright in the snow under the bare birches.

They had been almost too young to understand what they did, then, and Anders had told himself every day since that nothing could ever set Thormod against him, or against Herulf, that they all three would always be brothers.

Herulf had not spoken to him for days afterwards. _Am I not brother enough for you?_ he had said, and there was nothing Anders could say to that which would not lead to a fight, or be a lie in the telling. Between him and Herulf there was love, but not always liking; they were perhaps too alike for friendship. Between him and Thormod was another thing entirely.

“No, no, of course you do not.” Thormod leaned over and clapped Anders on the shoulder, and it was as if neither of them had said anything at all.

Yet even as Thormod rolled himself into his wadmal cloak and fell asleep, Anders felt as though one of the Norns had laid a cold hand on his shoulder.

* * *

At the end of summer, taking a string of amber beads that seemed to draw light into its red-gold core like a flame, Anders went up the valley to see Signy Sigurdsdottir. She was alone in front of her father’s house, and he saw her before she looked up. He checked for a moment, looking at her: her smooth dark hair braided back from her face, and the way she sat slim and graceful as a willow in her blue gown, spinning. A great tawny cat lay by her feet, blinking lazily in the late afternoon sun.

It made his chest ache to see her, to think that soon she would sit like this outside his house, the house he would build in the land down by the stream at the bottom of the valley. And when he returned from the sea, she would be there, warm and laughing and _his._

She must have heard him coming up the path, for she looked up and smiled, and for a moment it was like looking at the sun.

But then, as he came closer, her smile faded, and the light was gone from her face. “Anders,” she said quietly, setting aside her spinning, “you have returned.”

“I brought this for you,” he said, holding out the amber beads, all the words he had meant to say fled like sea-foam before a ship’s prow. He had enough for a bride-price and morning-gift now, in heavy silver, tucked under the spare sark in his sea-kist.

“Oh,” Signy said, “it is beautiful.” But she did not touch the beads, only held her hand out as if there were a ravine between them that she could not cross. And then, without really looking at him, “You should leave before my brothers return.”

Anders stood there for a moment, not understanding.

“I am to marry Grettir Half-hand,” she said, and when she did at last meet his eyes, her own were dry. “I want a husband who will not be always away on the whale-road, a stranger to our children. My father wants this for me, also. I am sorry, Anders.”

She might have said something more, after that, but Anders did not hear it over the rushing in his ears. The amber beads fell from his hand, but he hardly noticed them scattering as the string snapped, and he did not look back.

He should have followed Thormod to Ireland.

* * *

It was spring when they found their father, face-down among the alder woods up behind Sitricstead with an arrow in his back, still wearing his old black wolfskin cloak. Herulf’s broad, steady face showed no feeling that Anders could see, but one hand went to where a sword-hilt would hang, if he were out raiding, and then checked and fell to his side.

They both of them knew whose hunting arrows were fletched with wild goose feathers, half red and half white.

Anders found that he was rubbing the little white scar on his wrist over and over, as if he could rub it out. He would not likely be taking the swan-road to Miklagard with Thormod Sitricson now, and it was easier to feel the pain of that than to think about his father, surprised by an arrow in the dark.

He was sweating and his shoulders burned and ached with the weight by the time they had carried their father’s body back to the steading and brought him into the hall. Everyone had gone still as soon as they saw, silent and watching, although Anders saw a few of the women cover their mouths, eyes wide. 

By the hearthfire their mother stood tall and straight, her face as expressionless as Herulf’s had been earlier. When they had laid him out she came over and touched the side of her husband’s face, where his cheek was pale against the blackness of his beard and his rough grey-streaked mane.

“Who did this thing?” she asked, her voice very level.

Anders leaned over and touched the arrow; he would have snapped it off, earlier, but Herulf had said to leave it for the Thing, although he had smiled a little when he said it, in a grim way that made Anders think they would not be waiting for the judgement of the greybeards. “Sitric Sighulfson,” he said.

“It was an ill-chance killing,” said their mother, in a way that was not quite a question, like she very much wanted it to be a ill-chance killing but did not wish to ask if it was.

“Likely old Sitric thought him a wolf in the darkness,” said Herulf, but there was nothing forgiving in his voice at all.

She grasped at Herulf’s arms then, in a quick desperate motion, the glass beads of her necklace catching the firelight as she moved. “You must not burn Sitricstead,” she said, her voice low and fierce. “That is a path that does not end except in blood, and I will not have you tear this steading apart. It will not bring him back.”

Herulf stood there like stone as she pleaded with him. Anders looked at their father’s body and back to Herulf; his earlier feeling of numb distance had passed, and now he felt the slow rising blood-tide of rage. Sitricstead ought to burn for this, and everyone in it; their mother was foolish, foolish and weak to think otherwise, and perhaps she was pleading with the wrong brother.

“We will not burn Sitricstead,” said Herulf, finally, but his eyes were locked on Anders as he said it.

* * *

“Father would not have accepted the Wyr Geld." The sound of Herulf's knife against the whetstone seemed louder than it ought to be, and felt like something sharp scraped over Anders’ own flesh.

“No,” said Anders. He still felt warmed by his rage, all but the lump of ice that sat in his chest when he thought of Thormod. What had been between him and Thormod was nothing to what was between him and Herulf, who were both fathered by the man who lay in his wolfskin cloak in the hall with torches at his head and feet. It was a tie stronger than love, and Herulf was right. Their father would not have accepted the man-price; he would not have rested until Sitricstead was ashes.

But they had promised their mother that there would be no fire.

It took them four days to find old Sitric alone, riding out in the lower sheep-run. Sitric fought like a cornered wolf, but he was old, and there were two of them to his one, and perhaps he felt he had already had his run.

In the end it was an easy thing, like butchering an ox. Herulf had a hot light in his eyes, but Anders felt less than he had expected to; it was needful, but it did not change that their father was dead, and it did little to quell the rage that gnawed at him like a hungry cur. He did not even know who he was angry at now: not old Sitric, bleeding his life out on the turf. Maybe Thormod, for going to Ireland, or his mother, for staying them from a proper vengeance.

And they stood there over Sitric’s body, blood still on their knives, looking at each other, and then Anders said, “Thormod will not accept the Wyr Geld, either.”

“Then we shall go to Miklagard, as we always promised each other, and let Thormod follow, ” said Herulf, with a bright, brittle edge to his smile. “And there will be a Holm Ganging when he finds us, brother against brother.”

He did not say _You were wrong to swear brotherhood with Thormod Sitricson,_ but Anders heard it all the same. 

Herulf had been right, and what was by blood oath made would be in blood feud undone. Anders was glad, now, that Signy had refused him. He had little to regret leaving in Svendale.

His fate, and Thormod’s, waited on the Miklagard road.

**Author's Note:**

> Initially I thought of trying to write something about Thormod and Jestyn, but everything I could think of was epic (which I do not have the best track record for) and/or slashy, and then my brain took a hard right turn and got all obsessed with Anders for some reason.
> 
> What if, I thought, Thormod and Anders had also been blood brothers, once?
> 
> Names for Signy and Grettir and old Sitric's father I cobbled together from the [Viking Answer Lady](http://anonym.to/?http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/ONNames.shtml). Sutcliff mostly used a combination of Old Danish and Anglicized names, although Anders' own name is both anachronistic and Christian (!), so I went for sort of roughly Anglicized Old Danish, on the whole, and didn't worry too much about it because the canon names were a mishmash to start with (it also seems unlikely that Herulf Herulfson or Sitric Sitricson would have been named after their still-living fathers). [Courtship, Love and Marriage in Viking Scandinavia](http://anonym.to/?http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/wedding.shtml) was also useful, although it seems that Anders choosing his own wife would be a little unusual historically. At any rate, I think if he had married the girl he was courting, it would have been mentioned in canon.


End file.
